IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 2021

Most recent stories in IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 2021

• Addressing climate change requires entirely new fields of engineering. Do you want to build hydrogen-powered planes? Bring down costs of capturing CO2 from the air? Find the safest way to reflect more … More

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  Engineers: You Can Disrupt Climate Change

  ieee.org - David Fork

  Seven years ago, we published an article in IEEE Spectrum titled “What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.” We described what we had …

• To keep up with the demands of deep learning, computers may soon be doing many of the relevant calculations with photons instead of electrons.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  The Future of Deep Learning Is Photonic

  ieee.org - Ryan Hamerly

  Think of the many tasks to which computers are being applied that in the not-so-distant past required human intuition. Computers routinely identify …

• New technologies have a habit of becoming “invisible” well before we reckon with their potential consequences. That needs to change.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  Reckoning With Tech Before It Becomes Invisible

  ieee.org - Stacey Higginbotham

  Ten years ago, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen proclaimed that software was eating the world. Today, the hottest features in the latest phones are …

• The #Bitcoin #blockchain is secured by an energy-intensive protocol called proof of work. There are other ways to secure a blockchain, though. Proof of stake, proof of capacity, and proof of burn can … More

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need To Be Energy Intensive

  ieee.org - Edd Gent

  Blockchain is a generic term for the way most cryptocurrencies record and share their transactions. It’s a type of distributed ledger that parcels up …

• Atomic clocks are known for extraordinary accuracy; now comes the Sapphire Clock, which has extraordinary precision—its every tick is exactly as long as the others. That makes it ideal for quantum com … More

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  For precision, the Sapphire Clock outshines even the best atomic clocks

  ieee.org - Ewen Levick

  Tick, tick, tick. The rhythm of clocks is universal. But how exactly alike are those ticks? For some vital applications, even vanishingly small …

• The dizzying variety of voltages, frequencies and plug configurations reflects the evolutionary history of electrical products around the world.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  Why Does the World Harbor So Many Different Voltages, Plugs, and Sockets?

  ieee.org - Vaclav Smil

  Standardization makes life easier, but it is often impossible to introduce it to systems that have a messy evolutionary history. Electricity supply …